


Figuring It Out

by hedgerowhag



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Neglect, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Drama, Gen, M/M, Protective Siblings, Running Away, and the shit show of the kylux crib, featuring: the skywalkers being themselves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 15:06:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15003476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedgerowhag/pseuds/hedgerowhag
Summary: Rey’s adoption was made official when she was six. Kylo, or Ben, had been shy the first time he met Rey. Leia had introduced her to Kylo as his little sister and he stuck out his large, sixteen-year-old hand to shake hers and mumble “Nice to meet you, Rey”.--Kylo helps Rey to deal with the fallout of running away from home.





	Figuring It Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [youdidnotseeme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youdidnotseeme/gifts).



The streetlights are running down the glass with the rain. Headlamps are melting onto the sidewalk. Rey watches figures skip between the water rivulets on the bus window, disappearing in the smear of Midtown Savannah.

Rey’s eyes are sore, but finally dry hours after she climbed onto the bus and sat with her head on her knees. The cuffs of her khaki jacket and hoodie are tacky like she is a pre-school kid, tasting snot on her upper lip. She should have packed a bag before she climbed out of the bedroom window down the pipes and onto the ledge of the window below.

Rey ran down the street, arms swinging, sneakers stamping a drumbeat on the flagstones of the suburban sidewalk. She was red-faced and dry-mouthed when she got into town. Her fingers were stuttering to unclip her wallet as she tried to get the cash out for her bus ticket.

The shifting of the gears, the rattling of the wheels underneath the seats, makes Rey think her phone is buzzing. She switched it off, scared to hear them ask where she is, if she wants them to pick her up, apologise. Han and Leia still think Kylo was an attention seeker for running away, breaking things, breaking himself, to hear them plead him to stop or hold him. They were right, of course, he wanted their attention. There was no other way to get it.

Leia and Han are good people; they have selfless, good intentions. But that never made them good parents.

Rey’s adoption was made official when she was six. Kylo, or Ben, had been shy the first time he met Rey. Leia had introduced her to Kylo as his little sister and he stuck out his large, sixteen-year-old hand to shake hers and mumble “Nice to meet you, Rey”. For months he had been quiet around her, responding to questions with gestures and mutters as he kept his eyes down turned.

Something finally got to Kylo when their parents were gone for longer than expected and Rey asked him why he wasn’t worried. He looked at her pink eyes and red nose and told her, “Don’t worry about them, we’re gonna be fine.”

He cooked dinner for them both and helped with chores while they waited for mom and dad to come home. Neither Leia or Han would sit at the table with them, rushing to finish respective work after asking how their day was and listening with half an ear. They would come to make dinner out of the leftovers once their children had gone to bed.

When Leia and Han started losing track, running loose with responsibilities, Kylo made effort to drop Rey off at school, pick her up as often as he could and drive her to get milkshakes and fries on Fridays.

Rey didn’t used to get Kylo, why he had been so difficult to their parents when he was nice enough to her. Why one day, after he turned twenty, he cleared out his room and decided he won’t come back.

When he left home, he gave Rey a number she would call on the landline when she came from school to any empty house. The cars would pull into the drive at some point past eleven, or Leia’s PA would call the house the next morning and inform Rey that Mrs Organa had to leave for “a very important meeting out of state, but don’t worry about it sweetie”.

Leia, or Han, would apologise later by buying Rey things: pretty shoes, toys she didn’t get for Christmas, school stationary, video games, a new bike. They would cart her through stores until her eyes would bug out from the options.

Two days and they would go back to arguing behind hands. Then, they would leave to kick the anger out of themselves. Rey can’t argue with that. Her parents are everything any kid would have wanted. She can’t be thankless.

Rey has come back to Atlanta from college for the summer break. She packed a shallow bag, owning the minimum and never staying put for long – she has work waiting out of state. Leia has upgraded her plane ticket and had someone guide Rey from her gate, carrying her bag to the hired car. Her room hasn’t been changed, despite Kylo’s being reconstructed into a filing cabinet.

Leia had ordered an entire buffet of desserts and herded Rey and Han to the table once she dislodged them from the garage. Rey had seen Leia turn her phone off and leave it in the living room, but her hand didn’t stop flinching to her right as they sat at the table.

It lasted three days, before gears started running against each other and Leia was pulled by the urge to be proactive work while Han seemed crushed by the prospect of remaining static. Rey became the buffer between them, like a court witness that stopped the forks from being jabbed into the dinner table while they chewed through their cabin fever. Rey wants them to just say it, what’s jammed between their teeth as they hiss at each to stop acting out in front of Rey.

The hallways are empty, guestrooms are hollowed out, so is the living room with cinema row couches. It makes it easier to hear when someone is speaking at the other end of the property. Rey sat on the staircase, wincing when either Leia’s or Han’s voice rose. She sat like she was part of the furniture, decorating the pretty suburban house.

Rey’s throat was sore with words she pushed down. She was waiting for someone to come up, corner her into saying what needs to be said. But she panicked when footsteps clapped through the house. She was ashamed, for her thoughts, for the intentions.

Rey got up and ran through the door of her bedroom and pushed open the window, slipping outside.

The bus leans forward as the driver presses on the brakes. It’s warmer in Savannah, despite the rain, but Rey is shivering, and her jaw is clamped so tight her gums hurt. She steps onto the dented curb and pulls on her hood as rain drops onto her.

The traffic gushes in the street, the air smells of dirty water that sinks through Rey’s sneakers as she walks past the blocks of red brick buildings with shutters over the doors. She turns the corner and walks two more blocks until she finds a bar with a canopy overhang on the windows and benches between potted shrubs.

Rey doesn’t feel the knuckles of her fingers as she holds down the power button of her phone. It takes her a moment to type in the passcode and swipe aside the notifications as she searches for Kylo’s number.

The signal breaks off the first time. The second time she hears Kylo’s bleary “What?” after several long rings.

Rey tries clearing her throat. “Hey—It’s probably not the best time b-but, I’m in Savannah—” She stops. Her tongue is dry, parched of words, itching the back of her throat.

“Rey?”

“Ky—”

“Rey? What’s the matter?”

She is sobbing, snot running down onto her lips, spit bubbling on her lips. She can’t hear what Kylo is saying, but his mumbled, deep voice is easing her snivelling. She thinks he is asking her where she is, so she stutters out the name of the road. Kylo asks if she wants him to stay on the phone, she tells him it’s fine.

Rey pulls the phone into the sleeve of her jacket to wipe off the rain after Kylo ends the call. The security at the bar’s door are looking at her. She tries to make no eye contact. The road is thick with taxis trying to push into the suburbs, the gaps between them red with brake lights. Rey’s phone is silent, the rain in her clothes is getting cold.

A steel grey car pulls out of the traffic toward the curb, almost harpooning a dawdling taxi. A hubcap screeches on the cement border and the door on the driver’s side opens. Kylo’s hazy figure falls out into the rain, sweatpants half tucked into boots and the collar of his leather shirt turned up.

Rey gets up and she is running, colliding into Kylo. His arms are iron wire, bunching her jacket as he lifts her off her feet.

Someone shoves into Rey’s back, wolf whistling. She doesn’t feel it, but Kylo crushes her to his side and spits something she can’t discern at the bystander. Then, he asks her if she has a bag, she shakes her head. They get into the car, breathing in the recycled air that is heaved out by the air conditioning. Rey is pushing the rain out of her eyes, folding her arms in front of her chest as she presses back into the seat.

Air fresheners jostle on the rear-view mirror as the car shifts – two fluffy cubes and a purple pine tree. Rey stares at them and the back of her throat becomes sour. She is crying and Kylo is leaning across the gap between them to hug her.

“It’s okay—Rey—I’m telling you, it will be fine,” he says against her hair as she grabs his arm.

Rey tastes salt as she mumbles, “I don’t want to go back, Kylo. I don’t—I don’t want to—I—”

Her teeth are chattering against Kylo’s shoulder. He keeps telling her it’s okay.

The car pulls from the curb into the river of taxis that has grown with the rain. Kylo clips the belt over Rey while turning the steering wheel with the other hand. At the traffic lights, he pats the hood of her jacket pulled over her head, the damp fabric stuck to her hair.

“I’m glad to see you here,” Kylo tells her as he watches the light change to orange.

The car is pushed through the streets by the rain, wheels caught in the puddles. None of the house match, like spilled beads and buttons. Squashed together or divided by fences, the houses flash mint green or orange or blue under the streetlights. Their balconies are timber painted white, trimmed with lace-like carvings. The windows are divided by thin panes, orange-yellow lamps silhouette plants on the sills and figures passing through the rooms, reflecting in the puddles on the sidewalk. A dog is sleeping on a balcony, feet pocking through the gaps of the white painted timber.

Rey rolls down the window. The air is cool after the rain, it prickles her burning eyes as she watches the scene slow in front of a white walled church with thin black slits for windows. The car turns to the curb of a street underneath sugarberry trees with sopping Spanish moss hanging like old lace. There is a point of red light on one of the balconies of a blue timber building split into apartment. The light flicks out like a discarded fly.

The engine dies down. The phone is heavy in Rey’s palm like a rock she is testing to throw. She should call, apologise. They don’t deserve this.

“Let’s go inside,” Kylo nods toward the building as he gets out of the car. “It’s getting fucking cold.”

Rey drags her hand up the white timber bannister climbing along the wall of the house, following Kylo’s shadow dripping down the outdoor staircase. The insects are quiet in the tree and the rose bushes in the neighbours’ garden that are spilling through the fence.

“Well, this is home,” Kylo says at the last door on the uppermost level. His keys are attached to a chain that is meant to be clipped to the belt loops of his jeans, but it hangs loosely from his fist as he jams in his house key into the lock. “You can drop your shoes at the door and— and I’ll hang up your jacket to dry,” he continues as he pushes into the apartment.

They pass the front door hallway where Rey tiptoes in her damp socks over cords and collapsing walls of cardboard packaging. Her hoodie is heavy with water, but she doesn’t take it off. All the lights have been tampered down and Kylo doesn’t move to switch them on, besides a floor lamp in the corner of the living room.

Kylo stops in the threshold between the living room and the hallway leading into the back of the apartment. He is looking at Rey in the blue-yellow light. He opens his mouth, closes it again, and reaches out. He takes the breath to speak, but the bathroom door opens behind him and humid air flushes down the hallway.

Water is dripping onto the floor as the shower curtain crinkles. In the doorway, Hux is dragging a towel off his head. The red of is hair blisters the yellow light.

Kylo breaths in deep, looking at Hux, then says, “I can smell it on you.”

Hux haphazardly folds the damp towel over his arm. “What are you talking about?”

“The smoke.”

“I, w—”

“You were smoking.”

Hux’s face creases. He is staring at Kylo in the semi-murk of the apartment. Rey looks behind herself, to see if there is anywhere she can step aside to leave this confrontation.

Kylo’s voice does something odd when he says, “And you showered to cover up that you were waiting on the balcony and being worried, aw—” It’s like he is calling a puppy, except that puppy is a six-foot-one man with a grimace pulling on his red face.

Hux tightens the tie of his bathrobe and walks away down the hall, snapping open a door and disappearing.

“We’re both well and safe, darlin’!” Kylo calls down after him, snorting when the door’s lock clicks in the frame.

It’s a week day and it’s late. Kylo pulls the vaguely tan coloured couch into a bed, shifting the coffee table mounted with game controllers and remotes out of the way. They load some of the throw pillows back onto the couch, but when Rey tells Kylo’s it’s enough he keeps throwing them on until the bed is a nest of fabric that Rey sinks into when she sits on the edge. She flops back, lifting her legs up off the floor, and the pillows collapse over her.

“That used to be my bed, y’know.”

Rey lifts her head out of the burrow of pillows. Kylo is shaking off his jacket, hanging it on the edge of a shelf with empty plant pots.

“Remember when I had that crisis? Quit my job and sold almost all the shit I owned?” Kylo sits beside Rey, making the couch jump underneath her. “Hux was the only one I knew here. He left me crash for weeks when my lease ended, and I couldn’t pay rent again.”

“And then you ended up being a free loader in his bed?”

Rey cackles when she is jabbed in the ribs, tumbling over to faceplant a satin pillow, smelling smoke in the stuffing. She squeals and snorts when Kylo tickles her again before jamming his knuckles between his ribs.

They have only just caught their breath when they hear the door open in the hallway. Hux is dressed to sleep and his knees bump into the drown-out couch, stubbing his toes on the coffee table as he meanders to the kitchen counter with cracked plywood edges. Kylo shoves the stack of unopened parcels out of the way on the kitchen floor before Hux steps on them.

“Haven’t you offered her anything to eat yet?” Hux whispers without bothering to lower his voice from Rey. “The drive from Atlanta is at least four hours.” He browses the cupboards before reaching for the fridge door. Rey can see that it is packed with protein shakes and oven pizza.

Kylo shoves his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants and nudges Hux’s shoulder with his head. He turns to Rey, still leaning on Hux, “Do you want pancakes? We broke the waffle iron—”

“ _You_ broke it.” Hux looks down at Kylo. He doesn’t shove him aside. “Remember? _You_ tried to add icing and sprinkles into it.”

“It was a collective effort,” Kylo says after deliberation and concedes Hux with a smile. Then, he repeats to Rey, “Pancakes?”

Rey sits up in the pillows. She has shrugged off her hoodie and pulled the duvet over her shoulders. “But it’s late,” she argues.

“So?” Kylo reaching into the back of the fridge for the ingredients under Hux’s deadpan coordination. “It can—” He drags a bowl off the top of the cupboards and wipes out the dust with his sleeve. “—It can be like what the girl did in that book you liked.”

Rey frowns. “What book?”

“The—The—” Kylo stops, then hisses through the teeth like the syllables are escaping him. Hux watches him, too. “The star something one. You made me go watch the movie with you.”

Rey tilts her head. Then, she snickers. “Oh—” she says. “O—oh! Fault in Our Stars?”

“Yeah that one,” Kylo responds over Rey’s laughter, muffled by the duvet. “We’re making midnight pancakes.”

Hux is gone before the food is done; he has complained about the unmixed lumps and the burned pancake edges as Kylo flipped them but refused to help. Rey was half asleep, watching out from under the duvet as Hux had caught his foot around Kylo’s ankle and tried to yank it out as Kylo scooped a pancake onto the plate. They spilled batter onto the floor and wiped it off their feet on each other’s pants. Kylo smeared grease on the back of Hux’s neck and cackled when Hux hissed and pulled him by the hair.

Rey sits with Kylo on the couch, both half buried in the pillows with the pancake stack balanced between them on a smaller throw pillow. They have poured dregs of syrup and defrosted berries to top off the pancakes. The TV screen is blank, but they stare at it, mutually exhausted.

Rey is sniffling as she scoops the crumbling pieces of pancake and bleeding berries into her mouth. Her lips are tacky and there is syrup on her t-shirt, red stains on her jeans.

“What’s up?” Kylo asks, swallowing through the lumps of pancake.

Rey’s laugh is hoarse. She says, “I forgot my phone charger.”

“You can borrow mine,” Kylo insists.

Rey’s voice is smaller when she says, “I didn’t bring any clothes.”

“We’ll find you something.”

Rey’s fork drops on the plate, scattering pancake crumbs. She is sobbing, the back of her throat filling with snot.

Kylo shoves the plate aside, grabbing Rey and gathering her under his own hoodie and pushing her head under his chin. He says nothing while Rey cries, rocking them against the back of the couch.

Rey swallows and wipes her eyes. “I’m a moron,” she says against Kylo’s hoodie.

Kylo’s chin jabs Rey in the head when he mumbles, “I don’t think so.”

“They didn’t even do anything. I didn’t have to leave—They are just having a rough time.”

“Thirty years sure is long for a ‘rough time’.”

Rey looks up. Kylo isn’t watching her; his face is bunched at the nose and brows. His mouth twists to one side and then drops.

“You can stay here,” he tells her. “If you want to go back tomorrow morning, I’ll buy you a ticket. But you don’t have to. You don’t owe it to them.”

Rey pushes Kylo aside. They look at each other. “How can you say that?” she demands. “They gave me this life. I am privileged to be in your family. They gave me everything. They are our parents.”

“Doesn’t mean they are any good at being parents, or that we should thank them for the minimal they do.” Kylo shrugs, briskly folding his arms. “Doesn’t mean you owe them shit or that you have to put up with their crap because we can’t fit into their idea of a perfect family they can’t keep together.”

Kylo gets up to wash the plates. He scrubs them individually, rinsing both sides. Every time he takes the next one to dry, Rey pictures him slamming an arraignment of plates and glasses from the dining table onto the floor ten years ago. He had stepped on the broken glass, screaming for the lack of something to say as Leia stood in the doorway, her expression heavier than the air before thunder.

The next day, after Kylo left with his bags, their parents mourned him like they buried him. A blame game started, Han and Leia taking chances at each other’s faults. The grip on Rey tightened with gifts and school, until she lost patience.

Rey expects Kylo to drop a plate, to throw the next one against the cupboards. But it clacks onto the stack of dishes that were left from dinner. They disappear in a cupboard and the countertop is wiped down.

 

Rey’s phone is charging on the coffee table, plugging into an extension cord. The borrowed pyjama pants are rolled up around ankles and the t-shirt is like a second blanket. The light in the corner of the room is off, the door at the end of the hallway is closed. But their voices still patter in like water dripping from the faucet. There is Kylo’s laughter and the turning of feet under the covers.

The phone is silent. Rey doesn’t sleep. She watches car lights pass on the ceiling and listens to a door creak in the street before a dog barks and the owner shushes it from the threshold.

 

 

The balcony doors shift the potted banana trees as they open. A lighter clicks. Hux sits in a garden chair, tapping off his cigarette into an ashtray beside a pot of petunias on the plastic table. The flowers still have the price sticker. The light is pale silver-golden coming through the Spanish moss draped on the sugarberry trees in front of the white painted Methodist church. He chokes on the smoke when the doors clack, closing behind him.

Kylo leans against the balcony railing, thumbs jammed into his phone. He has showered from early morning sessions at the gym. He will be back during the afternoon to teach the personal training regimes after sleeping through most of the early afternoon.

Hux enjoys the sight of Kylo’s naked back and the low rise of his sweatpants as he thumbs the phone screen.

“Want me to decipher another email?” Hux asks as smoke passes between his teeth.

“If you know how to tell my mom to fuck off kindly, I would appreciate it,” Kylo tells him.

Hux flicks the dead petunia petals off the table to the thumbs tapping on the phone screen. “I am afraid I underperform in the sincerity department.” He is quiet for a moment. “Call Han.”

“Mmm… Want to bet he ditched his burner in a gas station toilet? Don’t want to give someone a heart attack by calling that thing while they try to take a piss.” Kylo jerks up his shoulders and Hux grins around the cigarette.

The window blinds clatter behind them when Kylo nudges the balcony doors with his foot. A cord drops onto the floor as Rey shifts on the throw pillows. She is childishly small under the covers that droop with her legs onto the floor. She has left the smell of the rain on the walls and floors of the apartment, like a breeze of cold Atlantic air that stormed into the hot, sticky streets of Savannah.

Hux looks at Kylo when the tapping pauses. He is muttering the words on the screen of his phone, then taps once and shuts it off.

Rey is turning on the bed again, pulling the duvet over her head and leaving her legs naked in the bunched pyjama pants.

“You will let her stay, right?” Kylo stares at Hux as he asks him. “She won’t be here all summer.”

Hux drags his cigarette through the ash mounted in the tray. He breathes out the smoke through his chapped lips and reaches forward to put his hand on the bare skin of Kylo’s back. “Someone will have to pick up her things.”

Kylo leans in as he smiles and kisses the corner of Hux’s mouth.

 

 

The front door closes. Something drops, clattering as it crosses the border between rug and timber. The thick air is shaking with the hymn of insects. Ceramic scrapes on the coffee table’s scratches like a car passing over tram rails.

Rey drags her face between two cushions, looking up. The game controllers and envelopes-made-coasters have been shoved onto the floor on the other side. An open box of pop-tarts and granola bars are on the table beside a mug with the state of California printed in rainbow over the white ceramic.

The fold-out bed tilts as it becomes overweighed on the corner beside Rey. She pushes herself up, swallowing rancid spit that has collected on her tongue, and looks at Kylo sitting on the edge of the bed. He is coiling and uncoiling a broken USB cord around his knuckles.

“Morning,” she says and scoots toward the coffee table. The duvet is pulled after Rey as she snags pop-tarts out of the box. She doesn’t bother with a toaster, ripping open the wrapper and taking a bite of the pop-tart. Crumbs scatter on the floor under the coffee table.

“Goddamn animal,” she hears Kylo snort.

Rey sneezes, spraying a diameter of sprinkles. “I learned from my big brother.”

She has a second pop-tart half way down when Kylo asks, “Do you want to go home?”

The dry clumps stick to the back of Rey’s throat. She chokes, coughs, and looks at Kylo.

“Do you?” he asks again.

“Would that be best?”

Kylo shrugs. “I don’t know. But is that what you want to do? Do you want to go back to mom and dad?”

Sweat is collecting in the lines of Rey’s hands. The pop-tart slips out of the foil onto the coffee table, breaking an edge. Rey doesn’t pick it up. She rips the toothed end of the empty packet, making silver ribbons she drops onto the uneaten breakfast.

“Do you want to?” Kylo pushes. “Rey—”

“I don’t want to be a replacement for you,” Rey mumbles, dropping the foil. “I feel like—I feel like furniture, you know?” She looks at Kylo, then at the floor. “Like, I should be happy for having the privilege of living under their roof. Like, here is some nice stuff, we are amazing people, we give back to society. Now, play house. You know? And that makes me sound like a spoiled, whiny bitch.”

The doors of the church open across the street. Shoes clap and voices exchange as Rey sniffs and Kylo pulls his legs underneath himself, dropping the USB cord. She doesn’t want to see the empty hallways, the egg shell walls and Leia’s stare when she doesn’t know what to do with a sobbing child.

“I don’t want to go home,” Rey says. “I don’t want to.” She slumps on Kylo, knocking her head on his shoulder.

It’s warm, but Rey is shivering. Kylo pulls the duvet onto her, hugging the fabric to her shoulders. “I’m not gonna tell you to,” he mutters. “You are my sister – you can stay here. Hux isn’t going to make you leave either.”

Rey’s voice is thick when she tells him, “But I want to call them.”

Kylo says nothing. He holds her, rocking them both as she shakes.

 

 

The throw pillows are piled to the side of the bed at the centre of the living room, the duvet is folded over the armrest. The balcony doors are propped apart by plant pots, water is running in the bathroom while the coffee machine gurgles in the kitchen.

There is a duffle bag on the table in front of the bed, weighed down by brown boots tied together by the laces. An envelope is tucked into one.

The sun is on the other side of the building, backlighting Kylo as he locks the front door on the landing. Hux is waiting for him, leaning on the staircase bannister. Savannah has stripped them of the habits they adopted in New York, from the heavy clothes for the Atlantic wind to their dependence on the public transport. The rush to move has been broken out of them, too. Even if it took years.

Kylo shoves the keys into the back pocket of his jeans and puts his hands on the railing on either side of Hux. They measure each other down, like their knuckles are tensing to break each other’s bones – not nudge Hux’s face closer.

“We’re gonna be fine,” Kylo says. “Yeah?”

Hux puts his arms on Kylo’s shoulders. His body droops against the white bannister as he sighs. “We can make it fine,” he says.

 

 

 

 


End file.
